The goal of therapeutic angiogenesis is to increase new blood vessel growth and blood flow to diseased tissues through the use of medical interventions. Early attempts to develop therapeutic angiogenesis for chronic cardiovascular disease using the delivery of growth factors or their genes failed to meet expectations. Despite these setbacks, methods to deliver angiogenesis-stimulating growth factors by gene therapy to oxygen starved heart tissue and limbs ischemic limbs continue to advance in clinical development.